An Open-Eyed Conspiracy

William Dean Howells

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9783849657659
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

'An Open-Eyed Conspiracy' is an extremely delightful book, and delightful in a way in which many American writers have long striven, and are still striving to attract, or distract, the attention of their readers, but in which Howells alone can be said to have attained distinction. He represents an element in the character of his countrymen, literary and otherwise, which may be roughly described as a sleepless sense of humor, which expends itself in some minds in large exaggerations of thought and speech, in others in the invention of tumultuous incidents and the horseplay of practical jokes, and in others in the exploitation of dialects, Eastern, Western, Southern, which never obtained anywhere, the vagaries and absurdities of bad grammar and worse spelling. Mr. Howells is a humorist of a higher kind —of the highest kind, we venture to think— not so much, perhaps, because his intellectual gifts are more abundant than theirs as because he has a clearer idea of their legitimate value and of the uses to which they should be put, because he is a student of humorous literature in its entirety and its specialties, and, more than all, a thoughtful, skillful master of the literary art. With the exception of Washington Irving, he is the only American man of letters of a humorous kind whom it is always a pleasure to read for the sake of his literature, which fulfils all the conditions and violates none of the minor morals of good writing; it is easy and exact, elegant and felicitous, individual and scholarly, and with a certain unpremeditated charm which defies analysis. Primarily a humorist, he is more than a humorist in his novels, and more than a humorist, pure and simple, in his lesser studies of American life and manners, of which 'An Open-Eyed Conspiracy' is a fine example. He calls it 'An Idyll of Saratoga', a sub-title which suggests rather than describes the class of productions that it illustrates. It is more than an idyll, as the phrase is commonly understood, so much more, and so different in some respects, that it might not be amiss to call it a comedy instead. It is jeweled with the liveliness of movement and the lightness of truth which is the life of comedy. The characters are sketched rather than drawn, hinted rather than painted; the situations are amusing, and not too provocative of doubt as to their ending, and here and there are little touches of satiric fun, unexpected gleams of wit, which add a sparkle to the freshness and gayety of the whole. No one who has seen, even casually and without reflection, the kind of hotel life which forms the background of this pretty summer play can fail to perceive the fidelity with which Mr. Howells has transferred its spirit to his pages; the closeness of his observation and his enjoyment of it for its own sake. Like the angler of whom Walton tells us, he handles his worms as if he loved them. A kindly, gentle nature and a satisfying writer, Howells is at his best in this 'Open-Eyed Conspiracy.'

III.

I fancy that a beauty is quite as often a solid and sensible person, with no inordinate wish to be worshipped, and this young lady struck me as wholly unspoiled by flattery. I decided that she was not the type that would take the fancy of De Witt Point, and that she had grown up without local attention for that reason, or possibly because a certain coldness in her overawed the free spirit of rustic love-making. No doubt she knew that she was beautiful, and I began to think that it was not so much disappointment at finding Saratoga as indifferent as De Witt Point which gave her the effect of disgust I had first noted in her the night before. That might rather have come from the sense of feeling herself a helpless burden on her friends, and from that young longing for companionship which is as far as may be from the desire of conquest, of triumph. Finding her now so gratefully content with the poor efforts to amuse her which an old fellow like me could make, I perceived that the society of other girls would suffice to make Saratoga quite another thing for her, and I cast about in my mind to contrive this somehow.

I confess that I liked her better and better, and before the evening was out I had quite transferred my compassion from the Deerings to her. It was forlorn and dreary for her to be attached to this good couple, whose interests were primarily in each other, and who had not the first of those arts which could provide her with other company. She willingly told about their journey to Saratoga, and her story did not differ materially from the account Deering had already given me; but even the outward form of adventure had fallen from their experience since they had come to Saratoga. They had formed the habit of Congress Park by accident; but they had not been to the lake, or the races, or the House of Pansa, or Mount M’Gregor, or Hilton Park, or even the outlying springs. It was the first time they had been inside of the Grand Union. “Then you have never seen the parlour?” I asked; and after the concert I boldly led the way into the parlour, and lavished its magnificence upon them as if I had been the host, or one of the hotel guests at the very least. I enjoyed the breathlessness of the Deerings so much, as we walked up and down the vast drawing-rooms accompanied by our images in the mirrors, that I insisted upon sitting down with them all upon some of the richest pieces of furniture; and I was so flown with my success as cicerone that I made them come with me to the United States. I showed them through the parlours there, and then led them through to the inner verandah, which commanded another wooded court like that of the Grand Union. I tried to make them feel the statelier sentiment of the older hotel, and to stir their imaginations with a picture of the old times, when the Southern planters used to throng the place, and all that was gay and brilliant in fashionable society was to be seen there some time during the summer. I think that I failed in this, but apparently I succeeded in giving them an evening of dazzling splendour.

“Well, sir, this has been a great treat,” said Mr. Deering, when he bade us goodbye as well as good-night; he was going early in the morning.

The ladies murmured their gratitude, Mrs. Deering with an emotion that suited her thanks, and Miss Gage with a touch of something daughterly toward me that I thought pretty.

“Well, what did you make of her, my dear?” Mrs. March demanded the instant she was beyond their hearing. “I must say, you didn’t spare yourself in the cause; you did bravely. What is she like?”

“Really, I don’t know,” I answered, after a moment’s reflection. “I should say she was almost purely potential. She’s not so much this or that kind of girl; she’s merely a radiant image of girlhood.”

“Now, your chicquing it, you’re faking it,” said Mrs. March, borrowing the verbs severally from the art editor and the publisher of Every Other Week. “You have got to tell me just how much and how little there really is of her before I go any further with them. Is she stupid?”

“No—no; I shouldn’t say stupid exactly. She is—what shall I say?—extremely plain-minded. I suppose the goddesses were plain-minded. I’m a little puzzled by her attitude toward her own beauty. She doesn’t live her beauty any more than a poet lives his poetry or a painter his painting; though I’ve no doubt she knows her gift is hers just as they do.”

“I think I understand. You mean she isn’t conscious.”

“No. Conscious isn’t quite the word,” I said fastidiously. “Isn’t there some word that says less, or more, in the same direction?”

“No, there isn’t; and I shall think you don’t mean anything at all if you keep on. Now, tell me how she really impressed you. Does she know anything? Has she read anything? Has she any ideas?”

“Really, I can’t say whether they were ideas or not. She knew what Every Other Week was; she had read the stories in it; but I’m not sure she valued it at its true worth. She is very plain-minded.”

“Don’t keep repeating that! What do you mean by plain-minded?”

“Well, honest, single, common-sense, coherent, arithmetical.”

“Horrors! Do you mean that she is mannish?”

“No, not mannish. And yet she gave me the notion that, when it came to companionship, she would be just as well satisfied with a lot of girls as young men.”

Mrs. March pulled her hand out of my arm, and stopped short under one of those tall Saratoga shade-trees to dramatise her inference. “Then she is the slyest of all possible pusses! Did she give you the notion that she would be just as well satisfied with you as with a young man!”

“She couldn’t deceive me so far as that, my dear.”

“Very well; I shall take her in hand myself to-morrow, and find out what she really is.”

Mrs. March went shopping the next forenoon with what was left of the Deering party; Deering had taken the early train north, and she seemed to have found the ladies livelier without him. She formed the impression from their more joyous behaviour that he kept his wife from spending as much money as she would naturally have done, and that, while he was not perhaps exactly selfish, he was forgetful of her youth, of the difference in years between them, and of her capacity for pleasures which he could not care for. She said that Mrs. Deering and Miss Gage now acted like two girls together, and, if anything, Miss Gage seemed the elder of the two.

“And what did you decide about her?” I inquired.

“Well, I helped her buy a hat and a jacket at one of those nice shops just below the hotel where they’re stopping, and we’ve started an evening dress for her. She can’t wear that white duck morning, noon, and night.”

“But her character—her nature?”

“Oh! Well, she is rather plain-minded, as you call it. I think she shows out her real feelings too much for a woman.”

“Why do you prefer dissimulation in your sex, my dear?”

“I don’t call it dissimulation. But of course a girl ought to hide her feelings. Don’t you think it would have been better for her not to have looked so obviously out of humour when you first saw her the other night?”

“She wouldn’t have interested me so much, then, and she probably wouldn’t have had your acquaintance now.”

“Oh, I don’t mean to say that even that kind of girl won’t get on, if she gives her mind to it; but I think I should prefer a little less plain-mindedness, as you call it, if I were a man.”

I did not know exactly what to say to this, and I let Mrs. March go on.

“It’s so in the smallest thing. If you’re choosing a thing for her, and she likes another, she lets you feel it at once. I don’t mean that she’s rude about it, but she seems to set herself so square across the way, and you come up with a kind of bump against her. I don’t think that’s very feminine. That’s what I mean by mannish. You always know where to find her.”

I don’t know why this criticism should have amused me so much, but I began to laugh quite uncontrollably, and I laughed on and on. Mrs. March kept her temper with me admirably. When I was quiet again, she said—

“Mrs. Deering is a person that wins your heart at once; she has that appealing quality. You can see that she’s cowed by her husband, though he means to be kind to her; and yet you may be sure she gets round him, and has her own way all the time. I know it was her idea to have him go home and leave them here, and of course she made him think it was his. She saw that as long as he was here, and anxious to get back to his ‘stock,’ there was no hope of giving Miss Gage the sort of chance she came for, and so she determined to manage it. At the same time, you can see that she is true as steel, and would abhor anything like deceit worse than the pest.”

“I see; and that is why you dislike Miss Gage?”

“Dislike her? No, I don’t dislike her; but she is disappointing. If she were a plain girl her plain-mindedness would be all right; it would be amusing; she would turn it to account and make it seem humorous. But it doesn’t seem to go with her beauty; it takes away from that—I don’t know how to express it exactly.”

“You mean that she has no charm.”

“No...

Table of contents

• I.
• II.
• III.
• IV.
• V.
• VI.
• VII.